If you've tried to answer this question with a Google search, you've seen the problem: answers range from "$200" to "$100,000," and most of the articles are written by companies trying to sell you the option they happen to offer.
Here's the honest version, with the numbers we actually see around Glens Falls, Saratoga, and the Capital Region.
The four ways to get a website, and what they really cost
DIY builders: $200–$600 per year, plus your weekends
Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy builders run $15–$50 a month. For a brand-new business testing an idea, this is a legitimate choice—and any honest developer will tell you so.
The real cost is time. Most owners spend 20–40 hours getting a DIY site to "fine," and "fine" is usually where it stays. The templates are built for anyone, which means they're optimized for no one—and the SEO fundamentals (structured data, page speed, local schema) mostly aren't there, no matter what the marketing page says.
Freelancers: $1,000–$3,500
A solo freelancer can absolutely build you a good site at this price. The catch isn't quality—it's continuity. The most common story we hear from local businesses isn't "the site was bad." It's "the person who built it disappeared, and now nobody has the passwords."
If you go this route, insist on two things: everything (domain, hosting, code) registered in your accounts, and a written note of where everything lives.
Local studios and consultancies: $3,500–$15,000
This is the range where sites stop being brochures and start being business tools: custom design, real local SEO foundations, booking or payment integrations, and someone who answers the phone in your time zone next year.
In the Capital Region, a well-built marketing site for a service business typically lands between $3,500 and $8,000. Add online booking, e-commerce, or customer accounts and you're realistically at $6,000–$15,000.
Agencies: $15,000–$50,000+
Full agencies bring teams—strategist, designer, developer, project manager. For complex builds with big content operations, that overhead earns its keep. For a typical local business website, you're often paying enterprise process for a project that doesn't need it. Ask who actually does the work; at many agencies, it's a junior or a subcontractor.
What actually moves the price
Whatever route you choose, these are the levers:
- Content readiness. If your text and photos exist, you save real money. If a writer has to interview you and draft every page, that's billable time.
- Features. Every login, payment flow, booking system, and integration adds scope. A "simple site with online scheduling" is not a simple site.
- Migration. Moving an existing site (and preserving whatever Google rankings it has) takes careful redirect work that a from-scratch build skips.
- Ongoing care. Hosting, backups, security updates, and small edits typically run $100–$300/month at the local-studio tier—or $0 if you're comfortable running it yourself and your builder hands over the keys.
The red flags that cost more than money
A few things we'd tell a friend to walk away from, at any price:
- The builder owns your domain or hosting. This is how businesses get held hostage. Everything should be in accounts you control from day one.
- No fixed quote. Hourly-billed website projects have a way of doubling. Reputable builders scope the work and commit to a number.
- "Page one of Google, guaranteed." Nobody controls Google. This claim is either naive or dishonest, and both are expensive.
- A price with no conversation. If someone quotes you before understanding your business, they're quoting a template.
So what should you spend?
A rough rule that serves local businesses well: your website should cost roughly what one good month of the new business it generates is worth. A contractor whose average job is $8,000 thinks about this differently than a shop selling $6 sandwiches—and their websites should get budgets to match.
If you're still testing your business: DIY is fine, truly. If your business is proven and your website is the weakest part of how you show up—that's when the $3,500–$8,000 range stops being a cost and starts being the cheapest employee you'll ever hire.